Bosawas PDF

WORKING PAPER NO.
25
April 2003
Your Biosphere is My Backyard:
The Story of Bosawas in Nicaragua
David Kaimowitz, Angelica Faune and Rene Mendoza
Summary
Despite efforts to establish protected areas around the world, the authority of government remains
weak in forested areas. We examine the largest protected area in Central America, Bosawas
National Natural Resource Reserve in Nicaragua, to demonstrate how over-lapping systems of
governance have encouraged rapid ecological destruction and social differentiation, as well as
corruption and violence. We conclude that Migdals observation about forest governance as being
guided by strong societies and weak states (1988) is unlikely to change and must be the starting
point for future efforts in decentralized natural resource management
CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL FORESTRY RESEARCH
Office address: Jalan CIFOR, Situ Gede, Sindangbarang, Bogor 16680, Indonesia
Mailing address: P.O. Box 6596 JKPWB, Jakarta 10065, Indonesia
Tel.: +62 (251) 622622 Fax.: +62 (251) 622100
e-mail: cifor@cgiar.org
Website: Http://www.cifor.org

The CGIAR System

The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) is an informal association of 41
public and private sector donors that supports a network of sixteen international agricultural research institutes,
CIFOR being the newest of these. The Group was established in 1971. The CGIAR Centers are part of a global
agricultural research system which endeavour to apply international scientific capacity to solution of the
problems of the worlds disadvantaged people.

CIFOR

CIFOR was established under the CGIAR system in response to global concerns about the social,
environmental and economic consequences of loss and degradation of forests. It operates through a series of
highly decentralised partnershis with key institutions and/or individuals throughout the developing and
industrialized worlds. The nature and duration of these partnerships are determined by the specific research
problems being addressed. This research agenda is under constant review and is subject to change as the
partners recognize new opportunities and problems.

The publication is supported by the International Fund for Agricultural Development under IFAD Technical
Assistance Grant No. 383-CIFOR.

Foreword

The global community has promoted devolution as the worlds best hope for better forest
management and more equitable sharing of forest benefits. Devolution has subsequently
become one of the most significant trends in world forest policy. Yet as this paper
convincingly shows, the transfer of control from central forest departments to local entities
can be highly problematic. David Kaimowitz reminds us that devolution means very little
when central governments give control where in practice they had none. And lack of
central government control is common in many forest areas, especially those that are still
intact, usually because of their remoteness or social instability.
Kaimowitz demonstrates that real control is rooted instead in complex local social histories,
struggles for power among the local elite, and the agendas of international agencies seeking
to conserve these often-expansive forest areas or oust governments. The Bosawas case
provides a fascinating account of how political forces led the central government to create
contradictory authorities for governance of Bosawass forests, by first designating an
autonomous region, later creating indigenous reserves and then establishing a national park,
with much of the areas in each overlapping. Kaimowitz usefully seeks to understand the role
of the state vis-a-vis local groups by distinguishing between sovereignty, authority and
possession. Possession we learn, is what matters most. But just who possesses Bosawass
forests on the ground is a complex game of power among regional governments, municipal
governments, indigenous territories and the Bosawas Reserve; among mestizos and
indigenous groups; and among different ethnic groups, armed bands, churches and donor
projects. For those who cheer such local control, Kaimowitz cautions that corruption and
undemocratic forces are rampant. Local management is not necessarily best.
CIFOR is pleased to produce this study as part of its Program on Forests and Governance. As
part of a series of studies on devolution and decentralization, the study highlights the
importance of local governance in forest management. At a time when much interest is being
focused on governance at the national level, we hope this study will serve as a reminder of
the role of local governance and the challenges for central governments in linking effectively
with these local institutions.

Doris Capistrano
Director, Programme on Forests and Governance
1 May, 2003

Related publications supported by CIFOR on devolution and local governance

Barr, C. and Resosudarmo, I.A.P. 2002. Decentralisation of forest administration in
Indonesia: Implications for forest sustainability, community livelihoods, and economic
development. Center for International Forestry Research, Bogor, Indonesia.
Barr, C., Wollenberg, E., Limberg, G., Anau, N., Iwan, R., Sudana, I.M., Moeliono, M., and
Djogo, T. 2001. The Impacts of Decentralization on Forests and Forest-Dependent
Communities in Malinau District, East Kalimantan. Case Studies on Decentralisation and
Forests in Indonesia. Case Study 3. CIFOR, Bogor, Indonesia.
Barr, C., Wollenberg, E., Limberg, G., Anau, N., Iwan, R., Sudana, I.M., Moeliono, M., and
Djogo, T. 2001. The impacts of decentralisation on forests and forest-dependent communities
in Malinau District, East Kalimantan. Center for International Forestry Research, Bogor,
Indonesia.
Casson, A. 2001. Decentralisation of policies affecting forests and estate crops in Kutai Barat
District, East Kalimantan. Center for International Forestry Research, Bogor, Indonesia.
Casson, A. 2001. Decentralisation of policymaking and administration of policies affecting
forests and estate crops in Kotawaringin Timur District. Central Kalimantan. Center for
International Forestry Research, Bogor, Indonesia.
Colfer, C.J.P. and Byron, Y. (eds) 2001. People Managing Forests: The Link between Human
Well-Being and Sustainability. Resources for the Future (RFF), Washington, D.C.
Colfer, C.J.P. and Resosudarmo, I.A.P. (eds.) 2002. Which Way Forward? People, Forests,
and Policymaking in Indonesia. Resources for the Future (RFF), Washington, D.C.
Contreras, A., Dachang, L., Edmunds, D., Kelkar, G., Nathan, D., Sarin, M., Singh, N.,
Wollenberg, E. 2003. Local Forest Management: The Impacts of Devolution Policies.
Creating Space for Local Forest Management: an Evaluation of the Impacts of Forest
Devolution Policies in Asia. Earthscan, London.
Dachang, Liu, 2001. Tenure and Management of Non-State Forests in China since 1950: A
Historical Review. Environmental History Vol. 6, No. 2 (April 2001). Pp. 239-63.
Edmunds, D. and Wollenberg, E. 2001. Historical Perspectives on Forest Policy Change in
Asia: An Introduction. Environmental History Vol. 6, No. 2 (April 2001). Pp. 190-212.
Guha, Ramachandra, 2001 The Prehistory of Community Forestry in India. Environmental
History Vol. 6, No. 2 (April 2001). Pp. 213-38.
Kaimowitz D., Pacheco, P., Johnson, J., Pavez, I., Vallejo, C., Velez, R. 1999. Local
governments and forests in the Bolivian lowlands. London, Rural Development Forestry
Network, Overseas Development Institute. ODI RDFN Paper, 24b, 16 pp.
Kaimowitz, D., Flores, G., Johnson, J., Pacheco, P., Pavez, I., Roper, J.M., Vallejos, C.,
Velez, R. 2000. Local government and biodiversity conservation: a case from the Bolivian
lowlands. Washington, D.C., Biodiversity Support Program, 41 pp.

Kaimowitz, D., Pacheco, P., Johnson, J., Pavez, I., Vallejos, C., Velez, R. 2000. Gobiernos
municipals y bosques en las tierras bajas de Bolivia. Ciencias Ambientales, 82-92.
Kaimowitz, D., Pacheco, P., Mendoza, R., Barahona, T. 2001. Municipal governments and
forest management in Bolivia and Nicaragua. In: Palo, M., Uusivuori, J., Mery, G. (eds.),
World forests, markets and policies, Dordrecht, The Netherlands, Kluwer Academic
Publishers, pp. 279-288.
Kaimowitz, D., Vallejos, C., Pacheco, P., Lopez, R. 1998. Municipal governments and forest
management in lowland Bolivia, Journal of Environment and Development, 45-59.
Magno, Francisco, 2001 Forest Devolution and Social Capital: State-Civil Society Relations
in the Philippines. Environmental History Vol. 6, No. 2 (April 2001). Pp. 264-86.
Malla, Y. B. 2001 Changing Policies and the Persistence of Patron-Client Relations in Nepal:
An Analysis of Stakeholders Responses to Changes in Forest Policies. Environmental
History Vol. 6, No. 2 (April 2001). Pp. 287-307.
McCarthy, J.F. 2001. Decentralisation and forest management in Kapuas District, Central
Kalimantan. Center for International Forestry Research, Bogor, Indonesia.
McCarthy, J.F. 2001. Decentralisation, local communities and forest management in Barito
Selatan District, Central Kalimantan. Center for International Forestry Research, Bogor,
Indonesia.
Obidzinski, K. and Barr, C. 2002. The effects of decentralisation on forests and forest
Industries in Berau District, East Kalimantan. Center for International Forestry Research,
Bogor, Indonesia.
Pacheco, P. 1998. Pando: Barraqueros, Madereros y Conflictos por el Uso de los Recursos
Forestales. In: Pacheco, P., Kaimowitz, D. (eds.), Municipios y Gestin Forestal en el
Trpico Boliviano. La Paz, CIFOR/CEDLA/ TIERRA/BOLFOR.
Pacheco, P. 2000. Avances y desafos en la descentralizatin de la gestin de los recursos
forestales en Bolivia. CIFOR/BOLFOR Report.
Pacheco, P. 2002. Contribuye la Descentralizacin a Mejorar la Gestion Forestal? Las
Lecciones Aprendidas del Caso Boliviano. In: Programa y Resmenes, Primera Reunin
Nacional sobre Investigacin Forestal, Avances y Perspectivas para la Inverstigacin
Forestal en Bolivia, 25-27 de Junio, 2002, Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia.
Pacheco, P. 2002. Contribuye la descentralizacin a mejorar la gestin forestal? Las
lecciones aprendidas del caso boliviano. CIFOR Infobrief, June, 2002.
Pacheco, P. 2002. Descentralizacin y reformas a la poltica forestal en Bolivia:
Implicaciones para las poblaciones locales y los bosques. Captulo para La Gestin Forestal
Municipal en Latinoamrica. CIFOR, GTZ, IDRC, FAO (in process).
Pacheco, P. 2002. The Implications of Decentralization in Forest Management:
Municipalities and Local Forest Users in Lowland Bolivia. Submitted for Conference on
Decentralization and the Environment. World Resources Institute (WRI), Bellagio, Italy.

Pacheco, P., Kaimowitz, D. (eds.) 1998. Municipios y gestion forestal en el tropico
Boliviano. La Paz, Bolivia, Center for International Forestry Research, Centro de Estudios
para el Desarrollo Laboral y Agrario, Teller de Iniciativas en Estudios Rurales y Reforma
Agraria, Bolivia Sustainable Forest Management Project. Serie Bosques y Sociedad, 3, 489
pp.
Potter, L. and Badcock, S. 2001. The effects of Indonesias decentralisation on forests and
estate crops: Case study of Riau province, the original districts of Kampar and Indragiri Hulu.
Center for International Forestry Research, Bogor, Indonesia.
Sarin, Madhu with Neera M. Singh, Nandini Sundar and Ranu K. Bhogal. February 2003.
Devolution as a Threat to Democratic Decision-making in Forestry? Findings from Three
States in India. ODI Working Paper 197. Overseas Development Institute, London, UK.
Sarin, Madhu. 2001 Disempowerment in the name of 'participatory' forestry? Village forests
joint management in Uttarakhand. Forests, Trees and People Newsletter No. 44. Pp. 26-35.
Shackleton, S., Campbell, B., Wollenberg, E., Edmunds, D. 2002. Devolution and
community-based natural resource management: creating space for local people to participate
and benefit. Natural Resource Perspective (ODI), No. 76. http://www.odi.org.uk/nrp/76.pdf
Shackleton, S.E. and Campbell, B.M. (2001). Devolution in natural resource management:
Institutional arrangements and power shifts. A synthesis of case studies from southern Africa.
SADC Wildlife Sector Natural Resource Management Programme, Lilongwe, Malawi &
WWF (Southern Africa), Harare.
Soetarto, E., Sitorus, M.T.F. and Napiri, Y. 2001. Decentralisation of administration, policy
making and forest management in West Kalimantan. Center for International Forestry
Research, Bogor, Indonesia.
Sundar, Nandini 2001 Is Devolution Democratisation? World Development, Vol. 29, No. 12
pp: 2007-2023.
1
Your Biosphere is My Backyard:
The Story of Bosawas in Nicaragua

David Kaimowitz
1
, Angelica Faune
2
, and Rene Mendoza
3

Summary

Despite efforts to establish protected areas around the world, the authority of government
remains weak in forested areas. We examine the largest protected area in Central America,
Bosawas National Natural Resource Reserve in Nicaragua, to demonstrate how over-
lapping systems of governance have encouraged rapid ecological destruction and social
differentiation, as well as corruption and violence. We conclude that Migdals observation
about forest governance as being guided by strong societies and weak states (1988) is
unlikely to change and must be the starting point for future efforts in decentralized natural
resource management.

Wishful Thinking
With one fell stroke of the pen, on a day she was probably thinking about something else,
Nicaraguas President Violeta Barrios de Chamorro created the largest protected area in
Central America. Using the powers vested in her by the Constitution and the National Parks
Law, on October 31, 1991, she signed Presidential Decree 44-91, which established the 8,000
square kilometers Bosawas National Natural Resource Reserve. Or at least so it appeared to
the government officials, members of the diplomatic corps, international conservation
agencies, and representatives of the press, who all applauded the measure.
For Jaime Incer Barquero, Nicaraguas minister of environment, and a highly respected
geographer and environmentalist, the reserves creation represented a great personal triumph.
He had made it one of his main priorities and the Presidents support reflected her great
respect for him and his distinguished career. The decree was something he could hang on his
wall, like a diploma or a trophy
There was only one small catch. Nicaraguas central authorities did not really govern the area
they had just declared a reserve, probably did not own it, and certainly did not possess it in
any real sense. A few years earlier, the government handed over much of its authority over

1
Corresponding author: David Kaimowitz, Director General, Center for International Forestry Research
(CIFOR), P.O. Box 6596 JKPWB, Jakarta 10065, Indonesia, e-mail: dkaimowitz@cgiar.org Much of the
material presented in this paper comes from interviews with key informants in Managua, Nicaragua and the
Bosawas region carried out between May, 1998 and September, 1999. The authors would like to thank David
Edmunds, Lini Wollenberg, and two anonymous reviewers for comments on earlier drafts.
2
Apartado Postal LM-184, Managua, Nicaragua, afaune@ibw.com.ni
3
Instituto Nitlapan, Apartado 69, Universidad Centroamericana, Managua, Nicaragua,
nitinves@nicarao.apc.org.ni
2 David Kaimowitz, Angelica Faune and Rene Mendoza

the eastern portion of the reserve to a regional government. Theoretically, at least, it had also
recognized the rights of indigenous communities living in the area, none of whom were
consulted about the decree. Equally importantly, for most practical purposes the national
government had little effective control over any of the reserve area.
This situation illustrates the contradictory and partial nature of many government policies that
devolve control over natural resources to local authorities and communities. Even though
the central government had recognized regional and local rights to the area when pressed to
do so by armed insurgents, international agencies, and representatives of civil society, it
reneged on its promises as soon as it saw the opportunity to do so. The establishment of the
Bosawas Reserve was just one more example that devolution is never a one-time event, but
rather an on-going process of negotiation that takes different directions over time.
The case also points to the fundamental differences between sovereignty, governance, and
possession. No one doubts that the Nicaraguan government has sovereignty over the area it
declared a reserve. Hundreds of years of precedent clearly establishes that an internationally-
recognized constitutional government exercises full sovereignty over its territory and can
create whatever protected areas it wants to. Based on that principle the Germans, Americans,
and the World Bank all funded the new reserve and the United Nations Education, Science,
and Culture Commission (UNESCO) declare it a World Biosphere Reserve. Nevertheless,
establishing an operative system of governance with formal institutions and rules that shape
peoples behavior is something else entirely. As we show below, the area actually has several
over-lapping systems of governance, none of which has managed to establish its authority
over the others. Among these, the system of governance linked to the central government is
one of the weakest. Possession, on the other hand, refers to who actually makes decisions
about how people behave and who others recognize as making those decisions. Many times
these decisions are made outside any formal governance structure; and in the final analysis it
is these decisions that count.
In Bosawas, the people who lived in the territory doubted both the governments authority
and ability to convert their territory into a reserve. Since they were the ones who effectively
governed the area, through both formal institutions and informal actions, they largely
managed to defy or simply ignore the central governments action. In the case of the
indigenous Mayangna (Sumo) and Miskito communities, the governments formal devolution
policies gave them a strong legal argument for doing so.
Previously literature on devolution of forest resources has tended to view the issue from a
top-down perspective and greatly overestimate and over simplify the central governments
ability to influence events. Even though these studies acknowledge that one main reason
governments want to devolve forest resources is because they find it difficult to monitor and
control how local people use them, they still assume central governments have a preponderate
role (Fay and de Foresta 1998; Saxena, 1997; Wily 1997)
4
. When one looks at these

4
Fay, C. and de Foresta, H. (1998) Progress Towards Recognising the Rights and Management Potentials of
Local Communities in Indonesian State-Defined Forest Areas. Paper prepared for the Workshop on
Participatory Natural Resource Management in Developing Countries, Mansfield College, Oxford. 6 7 April.
Saxena, N.C. (1997) The Saga of Participatory Forest Management in India. CIFOR Special Publication. Bogor:
Center for International Forestry Research.
Wily, L. (1997) Finding the Right Institutional and Legal Framework for Community-Based Natural Forest
Management, The Tanzanian Case. CIFOR Special Publication. Bogor: Center for International Forestry
Research.
CIFOR Working Paper No. 23: Your Biosphere is My Backyard: The Story of Bosawas in Nicaragua 3

situations from a local or regional perspective, however, it quickly becomes apparent that
central governments are only one of many actors and often not among the most powerful.
Many forested regions constitute what Scott refers to as nonstate spaces; places beyond the
effective control of government (1998)
5
. Historically, they were simply too impenetrable and
remote, rebellious, sparsely populated, economically irrelevant or hard to tax to justify the
central governments investing enough in these regions to dominate them. As such, they
remain partially outside the influence of the modern national state, on the boundary between
order and disorder. With government presence confined to a small number of locations and
its legitimacy severely undermined by the general lack of public services, many national
governments find they cannot carry out their most basic functions in these areas: to enforce
property rights and maintain order. That is one reason many of them have chosen to delegate
rights and responsibilities over these areas to large forest concessions. Indeed, to a large
extent precisely the same factors that have permitted the continued presence of primary forest
and other natural ecosystems are those that discourage strong central government control.
Broad social trends towards reduced central government expenditures and greater political
and administrative decentralization have simply reinforced these tendencies.
Under such circumstances, it appears somewhat misleading or disingenuous to talk about
central governments devolving authority over forest resources when they have never had
such authority. It is more useful to think of devolution as a last ditch effort by governments to
have any influence at all by entering into negotiations with those who effectively control the
resources. This does not necessarily imply that central governments actions are completely
irrelevant in these areas. Our key message for policy analysts and conservationists,
particularly those in the north, is that they should stop assuming that just because something
is written in a policy document or law that the reality on the ground reflects that. A decree is
not a park. Management plans generally have little to do with how things are managed. Just
because a ministry or project has fancy brochures and a large office in the capital does not
mean it influences daily life in the interior.
This paper uses the example of the area delineated as the Bosawas Reserve to illustrate some
of these basic points. The area provides a good example because it involves several types of
de jure and de facto devolution in a context of failed government efforts to exert centralized
control. We believe that situations such as this are much more common than those in which
governments have voluntarily handed over authority it actually exercised.
We begin by offering the reader some basic background about the region. For convenience
sake, we refer to the area currently covered by the Bosawas Reserve as Bosawas. Following
that we analyze certain aspects of the regions history that help explain why the governments
rule over the area and its perceived legitimacy there remains tenuous. Then we focus on the
governments current ability to govern the reserve. Next we look at the negotiations that have
taken place between the central government and local authorities and their outcomes. We end
with a few concluding remarks.
Cowboys and Indians in the Humid Tropics
When the government finally got around to measuring the Bosawas Reserve several years
after creating it, it turned out that the area within the boundaries it had defined was only

5
Scott, J.C. (1998) Seeing Like A State, How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Conditions Have Failed.
New Haven: Yale University Press.

7,400 square kilometers, not the 8,000 it first imagined. About half of that area belonged to
three municipalities of the Northern Autonomous Atlantic Region (RAAN), Bonanza, Siuna,
and Waspam. The other half fell under the jurisdiction of the municipalities of Cua-Bocay
and Wiwili in the Department of Jinotega (The Nature Conservancy 1997)
6
. Historically and
culturally, most of the RAAN forms part of Nicaraguas Atlantic Coast Region, while most of
Jinotega forms part of Nicaraguas predominantly mestizo Interior Region. As we explain
below, the history, government institutions, production systems, and ethnic composition of
these two regions are markedly distinct.
As one moves from the southwest portion of Bosawas to the northeast the elevation slowly
descends from over 600 meters almost down to sea level. The distinction of having the
highest elevation goes to two mountains on the reserves southeast corner, Saslaya and El
Toro, each with peaks above 1,600 meters. Smaller mountains surround them and contribute
to a landscape the ranges from rolling hills to quite rugged terrain. The rest of Bosawas is
rather flat.
A dense network of rivers, streams, and creeks flows down from the mountains out to the
Atlantic Sea. Historically, the Amaka, Bocay, Coco, Lakus, Wina, and Waspuk Rivers
formed the central axes of traditional indigenous settlements in the area. The name Bosawas
itself, invented by Incer and his colleagues, takes the first letters of the Bocay River, the
Saslaya Mountain, and the Waspuk River. The Coco River demarcates Nicaraguas northern
border with Honduras. Both it and the Bocay River are navigable over long stretches. The
climate gets wetter as you move east and/or go into higher elevations. Yearly rainfall
averages between 1,600 and 2,000 mm in the western areas, but rises to over 3,000 mm in
some eastern areas and higher locations (GTZ/DED 1992)
7
.
As of 1996, humid tropical broadleaf forest still covered 77% of Bosawas, with most of the
remainder already converted to crops and pastures (Anonymous 1999)
8
. Together with the
adjoining area on the Honduran side, this constitutes the largest remaining more or less
continuous forest area in Central America. These forest still house a large percentage of the
countrys 2,500 tree species, including highly coveted species such as mahogany (Swietenia
macrophylla), royal cedar (Cedrela odorata), and blond cedar (Carapa guianensis). They
also constitute the habitat for a diverse and colorful collection of animals, including jaguars,
monkeys, deer, tapirs, crocodiles, parrots, toucans, and hawks.
About 250,000 people live in Bosawas, more or less equally divided between indigenous
people and mestizos. Thanks to rapid in-migration, in recent years on average the mestizo
population has grown 17% each year. Over two-thirds of them moved into the area after the
end of Nicaraguas civil war in 1990 and most arrived after the 1991 Bosawas decree. Most
mestizos settled in the south, along the Bocay, Iyas, and Wina Rivers. The only increase in
the indigenous (Mayangna and Miskito) population comes from natural fertility, which
amounts to some 3.5% yearly. The Mayangnas live chiefly to the north of the mestizos along

6
(1997) Miskito Indian Tasbaika Kum, Plan de manejo territorial. The Nature Conservancy. Managua.
7
GTZ/DED (December 1992) Proteccin de Recursos Naturales y Desarrollo Rural Sostenido en la Zona Rio
Waspuk Bonanza Siuna, Region Autnoma Atlntico Norte (RAAN) de Nicaragua, Managua.
8
Anonymous (1999) Bosawas Depredado al 23 por Ciento. El Nuevo Diario. 24 March: 2.

the Waspuk, Lakus, Bambama, and Wawa Rivers as well as to the north of the mestizos on
the Bocay River. Most Miskitos dwell along the banks of the Coco River (Stocks 1996)
9
.
Mestizo farmers have lain claim to the bulk of Bosawas southern quarter, most of which is in
Jinotega. Even though a great majority lacks valid legal titles, their informal property rights
carry a great deal of weight locally. These farmers grow corn, beans, and rice and raise cattle.
Although at present, the region still has less than 2,000 head of cattle, most mestizo farmers
aspire to own more cattle in the future (Stocks 1998)
10
. Some communities rely on logging
for an important part of their income but reliable data on timber extraction are not available.
Mayangna and Miskito households have much more diversified livelihood strategies. They
grow a wider variety of crops including more plantains, tubers, and rice; they hunt and fish
more; they harvest timber and they pan for gold. Although a few families own cattle, it plays
a minor role in village life (Stocks 1998).
Apart from those living in the reserve, outside loggers regularly enter the area, mostly
looking for mahogany and cedar. In the Miskito areas along the Coco River, a large
Dominican company practically monopolizes the timber trade. Sometimes it logs itself; more
often it purchases timber from local farmers. Wealthy Nicaraguan timber merchants dominate
the trade in most of the rest of Bosawas. They generally buy boards cut with chain saws from
small farmers who live near the reserve and log inside it. On occasion, the merchants also
hire their own logging crews or purchase wood from the reserves inhabitants.
A Miskito Kingdom, A Forgotten Hinterland, and a Couple of Wars
Historically, much of the area in the Northern Atlantic Autonomous Region (RAAN) was not
formally incorporated into the Republic of Nicaragua until the middle of the Nineteenth
Century. Its effective incorporation occurred much later. Some would argue it has not
happened yet.
For almost two hundred years beginning in the early seventeenth century it was Britain, not
Spain that dominated Nicaraguas Atlantic coast. During most of that period it practiced a
sort of indirect rule in which the Miskito Indians and other local inhabitants were largely
permitted to manage their own local affairs. As part of this process, around 1680 the British
crowned a Miskito leader as king and recognized the Mosquito Kingdom as the government
of the Atlantic Coast, acting under British Rule (Hale 1994)
11
. In 1787, the British handed
formal control over the region to Spain. Strong Miskito resistance kept the Spanish from
effectively governing the area and Britain reasserted its dominion in 1844. Once again it
declared the area a British Protectorate and recognized the Miskito king as its local ruler. This
formally ended in 1860 when the British signed the Treaty of Managua and recognized
Nicaraguan sovereignty over the Atlantic Coast. Nevertheless, the same treaty established a
smaller Miskito Reserve in the coastal areas of the Atlantic Coast that was to have its own
constitution and continue to be governed by the English laws (The Nature Conservancy

9
Stocks, A. (1996) The Bosawas Natural Reserve and the Mayanga of Nicaragua. In Traditional Peoples and
Biodiversity Conservation in Large Tropical Landscapes (Kent H. Redford and Jane A. Mansour eds.). America
Verde Publications. The Nature Conservancy, Arlington, Virginia. ISBN 1-886765-03-0. p.1-32.
10
Stocks, A. (1998) Indigenous and Mestizo Settlements in Nicaraguas Bosawas Reserve: The Prospects for
Sustainability. Paper presented at the Annual Meetings of the Latin American Studies Association in Chicago on
24-26 September 1998.
11
Hale, C.R. (1994) Resistance and Contradiction, Miskitu Indians and the Nicaraguan State, 1894 1987.
Stanford: Stanford University Press.

1997). Most of Bosawas was included in the original British Protectorate but not in the new
Miskito Reserve. However, the Nicaraguan Government did almost nothing to assert its
authority there. Thus, for most of the Nineteenth Century the indigenous people of Bosawas
largely governed themselves, under British auspices.
Nicaragua did not make any real attempt to govern the Atlantic Coast until 1894 when
President Jose Santos Zelaya sent troops led by General Rigoberto Cabezas to occupy the
region and abolish the Miskito Reserve. Zelaya forced the Miskito chief into exile, named
General Rigoberto Cabezas governor, declared Spanish the official language, and created a
new department called Zelaya covering the entire region. Britain and Nicaraguan then
negotiated for almost a decade until the British finally signed the Harrison-Altamirano
Treaty in 1905, in which they relinquished all claims to the area (Hale 1994).
Even after the Nicaraguan government deposed the Miskito and British authorities it
remained almost completely absent from the area around Bosawas for many years. The
United States government forced Zelaya out of office in 1909. During most of the next
twenty-five years, the country was racked by civil war and occupied intermittently by U.S.
Marines. Between 1928 and 1934, the troops of Nicaraguan guerilla leader General Augusto
Cesar Sandino maintained a regular presence in Bosawas, aided by the regions remoteness
and limited government presence. Several gold mines had opened in Bonanza and Siuna to
the south of Bosawas at the beginning of the century but the fighting forced them to close
(DED/GTZ 1992).
Until the 1950s, no road passed anywhere near Bosawas, with access to the region limited to
boat or small plane. Then the government built a road connecting Siuna to the Atlantic Ocean
to encourage mining. About a decade later, the American Neptune mining company extended
that road to Bonanza (GTZ/DED 1992), but it was impossible to reach Bonanza and Siuna by
car from the Nicaraguas Pacific Coast until the 1970s. They could get to the towns of Wiwili
and Cua from the Pacific before that, but that still left them very far from the current reserve.
The central government provided almost no social services to the region. Along the Coco
River, the Moravian Church assumed traditional government functions such as education and
health. Beginning in the late 1950s, Waspams local government made a concerted effort to
improve the towns schools. The foreign mining companies in Bonanza and Siuna provided
electricity, water, basic healthcare, and other services. Elsewhere people basically relied on
traditional means.
Formal local governments arrived at different times in each area. A Spanish mining company
named and financed Siunas first local authorities near the beginning of the century, although
the municipality did not receive official government recognition until 1969. Waspam
officially became a municipality in 1956. Bonanza, Cua-Bocay, and Wiwili did not receive
municipal status until 1989.
Under the Somoza regime that governed from 1934 until 1979, the National Guard
maintained a regular presence on the Jinotega (mestizo) side of the present-day Bosawas
Reserve. Most large rural settlements had centrally appointed authorities charged with
maintaining order. These authorities did not go uncontested, however, since both Cua-Bocay
and Wiwili witnessed fierce fighting between the National Guard and the Sandinista Front for
National Liberation (FSLN) after 1969.

When the Sandinistas came to power in 1979, they attempted to apply the same policies and
forms of government on the Atlantic Coast as they used in the Pacific. This led to dramatic
improvements in services like education, health, and rural credit. However, the Sandinistas
imposed many measures and authorities without taking into account the great cultural
differences between the two regions. Over night, the situation on the Coast went from (not so
benign) neglect to (perhaps even less benign) massive government presence. The government
sent in thousands of teachers, doctors, soldiers, and administrators from the Nicaraguas
Pacific and Interior Regions and set up new government offices and mass organizations
modeled after those on the Pacific. The new arrivals rarely spoke the local languages
(English, Miskito, Mayangna, Rama, and Garifona), came from predominantly Catholic
backgrounds (whereas the Moravian Church was the most important on the Coast), and
frequently expressed racist sentiments about the local population. Moreover, they brought
with them a strident revolutionary rhetoric that had little historical relation to the Coasts
experience. The fact that new government nationalized the mines, fishing, and forest
industries, but lacked sufficient funds and expertise to keep them running only aggravated the
problem.
This situation coincided with the gradual maturation of a militant ethnic consciousness
among the Miskitos and a growing demand for regional autonomy on the Atlantic Coast; both
encouraged by the problems mentioned above. MISURASATA (Miskitos, Sumos, Ramas,
and Sandinistas United), an indigenous organization formed just several months after the
Sandinistas came to power, gave political expression to these demands. Although the
Sandinistas initially supported its creation, the relations between them soon deteriorated. The
Sandinistas accused certain MISURASATA leaders of secretly promoting an independent
Miskito nation and began to harass and jail them (Hale 1994).
Soon after, in 1981, several key Miskito leaders went into exile in Honduras and set up a
guerrilla army to attack the Nicaraguan Armed Forces (Nietschmann, 1990)
12
. The Reagan
Administration in the United States took advantage of this situation to weaken the Sandinistas
militarily, and damage their public image internationally, and provided the Miskitos with
arms, money, and training. Even though the Reagan Administration had no particular interest
in promoting Miskito nationalism per se, they found it a convenient weapon in their cold war
campaign against the Sandinistas. This led to a vicious cycle of government repression,
increased Miskito support for the guerrillas, followed by more repression. As a result, within
a few years practically the entire Miskito and Mayangna population, including those living in
Bosawas, had fled to Honduras or been forcibly or voluntarily relocated to resettlement
camps by the Nicaraguan government (CAPRI 1998
13
, Hale 1994).
Realizing that their position was militarily and politically untenable, in the mid-1980s the
Sandinistas backtracked and offered the Atlantic Coasts leaders major concessions,
including regional autonomy. In essence, the government devolved substantial control over
the region and its resources to the local population at gun point. Out of this process emerged
the 1987 Atlantic Coast Regional Autonomy Law. The Law established two separate
autonomous regions (RAAN and RAAS), each with its own multi-ethnic government
(CRAAN and CRAAS), and gave those governments substantial authority over their affairs.
Together, the two regions covered an area of 57,000 square kilometers, 43% of the national

12
Nietschmann, B. (1990) Conservation by Conflict in Nicaragua. Natural History. 11(90): 42-48.
13
Centro de Apoyo a Programas y Proyectos (CAPRI) (May 1998) Regin Autnoma del Atlntico Norte, El
Desafio de la Autonoma. CAPRI, Second Edition. Managua.

territory. Of the 186,354 inhabitants of the RAAN, 42% were Mestizos (a large portion of
whom lived in Siuna), 40% Miskitos, 10% Creoles, and 8% Mayangnas (Acosta 1996)
14
.
As part of this same process, the government devolved forest resources in a second sense by
formally recognizing the communal property rights of the regions villages over the lands,
waters and forests that traditionally belonged to the communities'. According to the new law,
communal property could not be sold, seized, or taxed. The government also acknowledged
the communities rights to preserve their distinct cultural traditions and to use and enjoy the
waters, forests, and communal lands for their own benefit (Hale 1994: 231, 238). This
reflected a broader concurrent trend in Latin America towards greater recognition of
indigenous territorial rights (Tresierra 1999)
15
. A new Nicaraguan Constitution promulgated
by the Sandinistas in 1987 further strengthened the legal principles of regional autonomy and
indigenous peoples communal land rights.
These and other reconciliation measures contributed to a more favorable atmosphere for
negotiations between the Nicaraguan government and the insurgent Miskito organizations.
(By then, MISURASATA had evolved into several separate factions, the largest of which
was called Yatama.) By the time the government held the first regional elections in 1990
most of the indigenous population had returned to their villages.
Although it had its own unique twists and turns, the Mestizo portion of Bosawas followed a
surprisingly similar path. Most farmers in the agricultural frontier areas of Jinotega and
nearby Matagalpa initially hailed the triumph of the Sandinistas and guardedly hoped the new
revolutionary government would improve their daily lives. The arrival of thousands of
Nicaraguan youth and Cuban doctors into even the remotest villages to teach literacy and
provide basic health care in 1980 and 1981 reinforced that expectation. But when the
Sandinistas started to impose controls on the markets for food and basic manufactured goods
and expropriated the farms of landholders with strong local ties some farmers turned against
them (Bendaa 1991)
16
. Once again, the Reagan Administration exploited the growing
discontent to its own advantage. The stage was now set for another cycle of insurgency,
followed by repression, which itself promoted further revolt. Through this process the
Nicaraguan Democratic Force (FDN), the so-called contras, managed to transform itself
from a pitiful group of former National Guardsmen and overpaid mercenaries into a veritable
peasant army. That army probably reached peak strength around 1985 or 1986. It operated
parallel to, but mostly independently from, the Miskito guerrillas to the east. Most of those
farmers who remained loyal to the Sandinistas found themselves obliged to join the
Sandinista Army or its militias to defend themselves from the contras attacks.
Militarily, the contras were no match for the Sandinista Army. Nonetheless, the low
intensity war they conducted under United States auspices eventually took a harsh economic
toll. By 1987/88, this along with ill-conceived economic policies, had pushed the Nicaraguan
economy into a severe recession. As the years passed, the population became increasingly
war worn and desperate and the Sandinista leadership once again recognized that they had to
seek a negotiated solution. This coincided with important changes in the international arena
that opened fresh opportunities for compromise; as a result, the Sandinistas soon found

14
Acosta, M.L. (1996) Los Derechos de las Comunidades y Pueblos Indgenas de la Costa Atlntica en la
Constitucin Poltica de Nicaragua y la Implementacin del Estatuto de Autonoma de las Regiones Autnomas
de la Costa Atlntica de Nicaragua. Managua: Canadian International Development Agency.
15
Tresierra, J. (1990) The Rights of Indigenous People Over Tropical Forest Resources. In, Forest Resource
Policy in Latin America (Kari Keipi, ed). Washington D.C.: Inter-American Development Bank: 135-60.
16
Bendaa, A. (1991) La Tragedia Campesina. Managua: Editorial CEI.

themselves negotiating both with their Central American neighbors and directly with the
contras. Ultimately, this culminated in the 1990 elections, where opposition candidate Violeta
Barrios de Chamorro defeated Daniel Ortega, and shortly after assumed the Presidency.
Within months after taking office, the Chamorro government and the contras (who were by
then referred to as the Nicaraguan Resistance, RN) had signed agreements that led to the
demobilization of 22,000 former insurgents. Under the auspices of the International
Commission for Support and Verification (CIAV) of the Organization of American States
and the United Nations Organization for Central America (ONUCA), the ex-combatants and
their families were resettled in a number of development poles and security zones (Cuadra
and Saldomando 1998)
17
. Most of these poles and zones were near the agricultural frontier
areas where the Nicaraguan Resistance forces had operated and where the government
thought it could resettle them in the large expanses of unclaimed forest. Ayapal in Cua-Bocay
and El Naranjo in Waslala, both near what would later become the Bosawas Reserve, were
two cases in point (Stocks 1998).
With the war over, Nicaragua no longer needed a large army. Ten of thousands of officers
and enlisted men found themselves suddenly out of work. To compensate them for their
services and avoid social unrest, the government resettled many of them in the frontier areas.
Former officers in particular received significant blocks of land. Other soldiers simply
returned to where they came from or migrated onto the agricultural frontier. A large number
of them eventually relocated in Siuna, particularly around El Hormiguero, a large rural
community adjacent to the reserve, taking advantage of the available land there (Stocks
1998).
The result of al this was an extremely problematic situation. In the early 1990s, Bosawas was
full of heavily armed indigenous and mestizo ex-combatants. The regional government of the
RAAN had significant legal authority over the regions natural resources, but little
institutional capacity. The regions indigenous communities had never felt particularly
attached to Nicaragua, nor received services from its government, and now had a Constitution
and an Autonomy Law that legitimated their rights over the territory. Several thousand
indigenous combatants in the region had fought the Nicaraguan Government to a standoff and
returned to their villages with pride and a strong sense of independence. The Mestizo farmers
had fought a war of their own, on both sides of the barricades, for the right to command
respect and determine their own destinies. The central government in Managua offered little
in the way of schools, clinics, credit, or infrastructure; and was about to declare all these
peoples land a reserve for monkeys, parrots, trees, and foreign tourists.
Backtracking on Autonomy and Indigenous Land Rights
By the time Violeta Barrios de Chamorro took office in 1990, the political context that had
given rise to the official recognition of regional autonomy and indigenous land rights had
changed significantly. Once the Sandinistas were out of the picture the United States
government lost most of its interest in promoting Miskito organizations, much less arming
them. The incoming government officials had not participated in the autonomy negotiations
and did not feel particularly compelled to respect them, no matter what the law said.

17
Cuadra Lira, E. and Saldomando, A. (1998) Pacificacin, Gobernabilidad y Seguridad Ciudadana. Orden
social y gobernabilidad en Nicaragua, 1990-1996 (Cuadra Lira, E., Perez Baltodano, A. and Saldomando, A.
eds.). Managua: CRIES: 105-138.

Over the next six years, Chamorro systematically tried to undermine the autonomy process.
In the 1990 regional elections in the RAAN, the Miskito-based Yatama Party won 22 council
seats and the Sandinistas won 18 seats, while Chamorros UNO coalition only won two seats
(Gonzlez 1997)
18
. Rather than recognize opposition control over the regional government
and negotiate with it, she preferred as much as possible to simply ignore it. To this end, she
created a new parallel quasi-ministry, the Institute for the Development of the Autonomous
Regions (INDERENA) to implement policies there. The government avoided developing a
set of implementing regulations to accompany the rather vague and general Autonomy Law,
preferring instead to use the laws ambiguities to increase its room to maneuver. The
government openly flaunted the Autonomy Law by naming regional delegates for its different
ministries without regional government approval. It also sought to reduce the regional
governments budget as much as possible to ensure that it could not effectively function
(CAPRI 1998).
Constant bickering and corruption within the CRAAN only furthered the governments
objectives. The forty-five member council proved too large and unwieldy to function,
particularly given the regions poor transportation infrastructure and the regional
governments small budget. Shifting political alliances and accusations of corruption led to
the removal of several regional coordinators, limiting the continuity of the regional
governments actions (Gonzlez 1997).
The government also stonewalled on the question of indigenous territorial rights. For the first
five years of its six-year term it avoided taking any action to demarcate and title indigenous
territories. Then, finally, in 1996 it created a National Commission to Demarcate Indigenous
Lands, with Swedish financing (Hooker et. al. 1996)
19
. It did this in response to pressure
from the Swedish Government and the CRAAN, and out of a desire to identify non-
indigenous public forest that could be sold as forest concessions.
Who Rules Bosawas?
Just because the government sought to centralize control over the Atlantic Coast and ignore
previous devolution policies, however, does not mean that it would succeed. Even though the
central government in Managua claims to govern Bosawas, any one who actually went there
might find that hard to believe. To defend their territorial integrity and enforce their laws and
decrees these authorities theoretically have at their disposal an entire army, a police force, a
ministry of the environment (MARENA), and, since 1998, a forestry institute (INAFOR).
Nevertheless, most of their laws and decrees have limited influence within the Biosphere
Reserve.
For most of the 1990s, the army co-existed in Bosawas with several autonomous armed
forces, each of whom established regulations, charged taxes, and imposed order in the
areas under its control. Off the record, the staff of European Union and Organization of
American States projects operating in Cua-Bocay, Waslala, and Wiwili admitted that they
regularly had to consult with these armed groups and their allies about project decisions in
order to operate. The German Embassy forbade direct contacts between local German
projects and the armed groups but the projects were nonetheless compelled to establish
informal indirect contacts. The most important of the armed groups were the Yatama ex

18
Gonzlez, A. (1997) Costa: Elecciones Sobre Arenas Movedizas. Envio. 178-179 (January February):
23-35.
19
Hooker, A., Hoppinghton, M., Fagoth, S., Bushey, K., Paiz, C., Lau, H., Brenes, E., Lainez, A., Brooks, J.,
Hagerby, L. and Moreno, F. (22 February 1996) Acuerdo de Montelimar. Montelimar, Nicaragua.

combatants, the Andres Castro United Front (FUAC), the Revolutionary Armed Forces
(FAR), and the Northern Front 3-80.
A thousand or so young Miskito men, most of whom had participated in the war against the
Sandinistas, formed the Yatama ex combatants to protest the governments failure to assist
them after laying down their arms and to recognize their peoples territorial rights. In
February 1992, these men attacked the police station in Waspam. During most of the next
five or six years they maintained a low profile presence in the Miskito communities along the
Coco River, which became a veritable pressure cooker of indigenous resentment, frustration,
and anger against the national government (Burke 1995)
20
. Finally, in 1998, they reemerged
in full force, occupying the town of Waspam and the road connecting it to the Atlantic Coast,
and sporadically attacking the Nicaraguan Army (Aleman 1998)
21
. The Yatama maintained a
lose alliance with the traditional village councils of elders, sindicos (tenure authorities),
and judges, as well as with the Mayor of Waspam.
In Siuna, some 400 former Sandinista soldiers created the FUAC in 1996 to demand
government assistance both for themselves as ex-soldiers and for the communities they lived
in. Some two years later they signed an agreement with the government and officially
disarmed (Center for International Policy 1997)
22
. Almost immediately the FAR sprung up to
take their place, and began operating in the same locations. Although alliances between these
bands and local farmers organizations and loggers were not as public or well documented as
the links between the Yatama and civilian Miskito authorities they almost certainly existed.
Many ex-Nicaraguan Resistance fighters joined the Northern Front 3-80, which operated in
Cua-Bocay and Waslala. The Northern Front 3-80 had a national agenda of pressuring the
Chamorro government to take strong measures against the Sandinistas, but was also heavily
involved in local issues. According to Stocks, In a practical as well as a kinship sense these
guerillas are just another face of the land invasions [of mestizo settlers into the Biosphere
Reserve] (1995:13). The auxiliary mayors of Ayapal and El Naranjo, as well as many leaders
of village peace commissions organized by the OAS maintained close contact with the former
RN commanders, including those involved in the 3-80 Front.
To a certain extent, the Army tolerated these bands and implicitly recognized their territorial
control. Its High Command apparently felt the bands were the result of social and political
problems that required political, not military, solutions. After ten years of civil war, the Army
had little desire to find itself bogged down once again in an unpopular counter-insurgency
campaign that might lead to widespread killing. According to one report, the army and the
police could not protect the population in some regions [in central and northern Nicaragua]
because they themselves were afraid of being attacked by the armed gangs and consequently
stayed away from these regions (PPRB 1997:4)
23
. The High Command was still composed of
Sandinistas and former Sandinistas, most of who disagreed with the conservative policies of
President Arnoldo Alemans, who replaced Chamorro in January 1997, and had no interest in
doing his dirty work. It certainly had little stomach for attacking the FUAC, most of whose
members were former Sandinista soldiers. Although on occasion the Army felt compelled to

20
Burke, P. (1995) Native Peoples of Nicaragua. Posted on the internet at
http://www.bos.umd.edu/cidcm/mar/indnic.htm
21
Aleman, A. (1998) Combate Mortal en el Atlntico Norte. La Prensa. 30 October.
22
Center for International Policy (CIP) (1997) Nicaragua: FUAC Demobilizes. Central America Update. 29
November 5 December.
23
Policy, Planning, and Research Branch (PPRB) of the Immigration and Refugee Board. Nicaragua: Update.
September 1997. Canada. www.irb.gc.ca/DIRB/publication/nic.043.htm

accuse these groups of being criminals and engaged in violent skirmishes with them, it
generally promoted negotiated solutions.
Ministry of Environment (MARENA) and Forestry Institute (INAFOR) officials faced an
even worse predicament. Their presence in Cua-Bocay, Waslala, and Wiwili consisted of a
handful of unarmed local delegates. These delegates were certainly not fool enough to enter
into open conflicts with the heavily armed local population about where they could live and
what they could take out of the reserve. Most preferred seeking opportunities for petty
corruption. On numerous occasions, Alvaro Montalvan, the National Director of INAFOR,
acknowledged that many INAFOR officials around Bosawas were corrupt and that the central
government could not control the situation (Olivares 1999)
24
. For a while, MARENA had
four forestry officials each in Bonanza, Siuna, and Waspam, financed by the Swedish.
However, once they pulled out in 1997, MARENA closed its office in Bonanza and left only
one delegate each in Siuna and Waspam, who subsequently became INAFOR delegates. As
of 1999, the entire Bosawas Reserve had only 12 paid park guards and most of the Bosawas
projects senior staff had their offices in Managua, several hundred kilometers from the zone
(Guevara 1999)
25
.
Nor was it only the armed forces, police, and environmental organizations that were missing
from the region. A 1994 study found that the ministries of agriculture, health, education,
social assistance, and the rural credit system all had limited presence in the areas around the
southern portion of the Bosawas Reserve and no presence at all in the active colonization
fronts (Ramirez et. al. 1994)
26
.
On the ground, a wide variety of overlapping local authorities and individual producers made
most decisions about who lived where, how much land they could claim, what they could
produce, and how they could produce it. In the indigenous villages, governance was largely
in the hands of the traditional indigenous authorities (council of elders, sindicos, and judges),
the Yatama commanders, and Church leaders. These authorities governed following a more
or less established set of traditional norms, although conflict and corruption were widespread.
In the mestizo areas, municipal governments, community peace commissions, commanders
of armed bands, priests, NGOs, the farmers union (UNAG), and donor projects with little
connection to Managua were all important in different ways. These groups maintained a
shifting set of alliances and used a complex mixture of financial, ideological, military, legal,
organizational, and technical means to achieve their goals. Bonanza has an active natural
resource commission and other municipalities have had them in the past. The NGOs and
donor projects provide credit and technical assistance and get involved in local politics.
Various groups give permits to harvest timber and transport logs. While the central
government has internationally recognized sovereignty over the Bosawas Reserve, these
people actually possess the area. If they want a mining company or a logging company out
of their area, they usually managed to get rid of it. That was what happened, for example,
with the Nycon Resources Company and the Recursos Nicaraguenses y Australianos S.A.
company. If there are conflicts between farmers or communities over boundaries, they
resolve them.

24
Olivares, I. (1999) Desconocen quien depreda Bosawas. La Prensa. March 24: 6.
25
Guevara, M. (1999) Gran Interogante para Contraloria, Que ocurre en Bosawas? Un proyecto frgil,
inconcluso y sin referencas. El Nuevo Diario.
26
Ramirez, E., Ardon, M. and Holt, E. (April 1994) Diagnstico para la identificacin de acciones para un
programa de desarrollo sostenible en la Reserva Bosawas Nicaragua (segunda version prelminar). Managua,
Commission of European Communities, Ministry of Foreign Relations of France.

Autonomy and Indigenous Territories in Practice
The Bosawas Reserve got off to an inauspicious start. Despite being one of Jaime Incers
main priorities, for the first two years the reserves technical secretariat (SETAB) had
practically no resources. The Germans conducted studies in 1992 and 1993, but did not
begin a full-fledged US$3.8 million dollar GTZ Bosawas Project until December 1994. The
United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and its partner The Nature
Conservancy (TNC) began a US 2.5 million dollar project in 1993. When the money finally
came, it went mostly for foreign technical assistance, studies, and management plans
(Ramirez et. al. 1994). The projects provided little money for MARENA to maintain a visible
presence on the ground and practically none for assisting the local population.
In principle, the Autonomy Law gave the CRAAN the right to regulate natural resources and
recognized indigenous peoples right to the territories they traditionally occupied, but no one
from the central government consulted either the regional government or the communities
before establishing the reserve. The communities were informed after the fact that they
now lived within or near a national reserve, moreover a reserve that began with restrictive
land-use policies that were poorly thought out, poorly communicated, and totally unenforced
(Stocks 1995:14)
27
. According to Howard, the indigenous people felt that the designation of
the reserve was a violation of their historical rights to their land and insisted that they
manage the reserve themselves (1996:6)
28
.
The reserve idea might have collapsed completely if it were not for the fact that TNC decided
to seek a strategic alliance with the Mayangna and, to a lesser extent, Miskito Indians. The
implicit deal was that TNC would support the indigenous peoples rights to their territory and
provide financial support for the fledging indigenous organizations as long as indigenous
leaders adopted TNCs conservationist rhetoric and helped prepare management plans based
on their traditional land uses and practices. Underlying this alliance was TNCs belief that the
indigenous peoples traditional livelihood systems were fundamentally compatible with the
conservation of the reserves natural resources and that the best way to protect those
resources would be by helping the indigenous people defend their territorial rights against
outside intruders.
TNCs efforts to strengthen indigenous territorial rights focused on: 1) participatory land use
planning exercises that including mapping and preparation of management plans based on
traditional practices and land uses; 2) legal assistance and lobbying to convince the
Nicaraguan government to title indigenous territories; 3) technical and financial support for
indigenous organizations; 4) support for voluntary patrols to monitor and dissuade intruders
in indigenous areas; and 5) assistance in establishing dialogues between indigenous
organizations, Mayors, the CRAAN, the Parish of Siuna, the police, MARENA, GTZ, and the
agrarian reform institute (INRA) (TNC 1995)
29
. Based on discussions during a seminar held
in December 1993, TNC organized its activities around six separate and partially artificial -
indigenous territories. Three of these territories were predominantly Mayangna, two were
mostly Miskito, and one was mixed.

27
Stocks, A. (1995) Land Tenure, Conservation, and Native Peoples: Critical Development Issues in Nicaragua.
Paper present at the Applied Anthropology Meetings, 29 March to 2 April 1995.
28
Howard, S. (1996) Autonomia y derechos territoriales de los Sumos en Bosawas, El caso de Sikilta. Revista
del Caribe Nicaraguense Wani. January April: 3-18.
29
(April 1995) Informe de avance, 1 enero 30 marzo 1995. The Nature Conservancy. Proyecto MARENA
Bosawas 001-93, Proyecto USAID #524-0314-A-00-3033-00, Manejo de Recusos Naturales en Bosawas
MARENA TNC USAID, Managua.

While TNCs activities undoubtedly strengthened the Bosawas Reserve and gave it practical
meaning, the Nicaraguan government reacted ambiguously to these initiatives. Although they
occasionally mentioned the need to title indigenous lands, neither the Bosawas Technical
Secretariat (SETAB) within MARENA nor the German Bosawas project adopted the
indigenous territories as the center piece of their strategies. MARENA did not want to give
up its control over the reserve to indigenous authorities and was not convinced indigenous
people would conserve the areas natural resources (Stocks 1995).
Geographically, the Bosawas Reserve and the indigenous territories did not fully coincide.
The six proposed territories covered 6,239 square kilometers. The majority of this area fell
within the Bosawas Reserve, but some did not. Similarly, parts of the reserve fell outside the
six territories (Stocks 1998).
Despite this government reluctance, TNC persistence and strong lobbying from the US
Embassy eventually allowed it to make headway. By June 1996, SETAB had produced a set
of general norms and conceptual principles for land use in Bosawas that explicitly recognized
the claims of the Mayangna and Miskito ethnic groups over the lands they had historically
occupied, based on the legal doctrine of the right of ancestral possession (SETAB 1996)
30
.
Around that same time, MARENA, the CRAAN, the national territorial institute (INETER),
the Attorney Generals office, and community leaders all signed an agreement to support the
demarcation and titling of the indigenous territories within Bosawas.
Meanwhile, MARENA began the parallel process of negotiations with the CRAAN
mentioned earlier that led to the formal creation of the National Commission to Demarcate
Communal Lands in February 1996 (Hooker et. al. 1996). The Commission met for the first
time in October 1996, with participation from MARENA, both regional governments, the
Attorney Generals office, the agrarian reform institute (INRA), and INETER, as well as two
representatives from indigenous communities. Although they were quite critical of the
process, the largely-Miskito Council of Elders in the RAAN focused their attention on the
activities of this Commission, rather than on TNCs initiative.
The alliances in these two parallel processes were complex. TNC had strong ties with the
Mayangnas and its contacts within MARENA were mostly in SETAB. Miskito organizations
dominated the CRAAN and traditionally the Miskitos and Mayangnas have not gotten along.
In addition to their traditional rivalries, many Mayangnas allied themselves with Sandinistas,
while the Miskitos tended to be anti-Sandinista. Different factions existed on both the Miskito
and Mayangna sides. The Swedish supported MARENAs office charged with managing
national forests (ADFOREST) and had few contacts with SETAB, GTZ, or USAID.
ADFOREST, INRA, and INETER did not want non-governmental organizations such as
TNC involved in demarcating indigenous territories and tried to get project funds to carry out
the task themselves. TNC focused on Bosawas, which included parts of Jinotega as well as
the RAAN, while CRAANs concerns covered large areas outside Bosawas.
Nonetheless, TNC and the GTZ might have prodded the government into titling the
indigenous territories in Bosawas had the World Bank not arrived on the scene. A 1996
World Bank study concluded that the laws regarding indigenous land rights were vague and

30
Secretaria Tcnica de Bosawas (SETAB). (June 1996) Normas generales y principios conceptuales para el uso
de la tierra (ordenamiento ambiental territorial) de la Reserva Nacional de Recursos Naturales Bosawas y su
Zona de Amortiguamiento. Managua, SETAB.

contradictory and that Nicaragua needed a new law (Roldan 1996)
31
. This, in turn, led the
Bank to require that President Aleman submit a draft Indian Land Law to the National
Assembly before it would disburse a $US 7.5 million dollar donation for an Atlantic
Biological Corridor project. This gave the Nicaraguan government an excuse to not title any
indigenous territories until the Assembly passed a new law, instead of issuing a title through a
Presidential Decree as TNC and GTZ proposed. That could take years, or perhaps never
happen. TNC and GTZ were furious and used their respective embassies to pressure the Bank
to accept immediate titling, but to no avail.
The discussions regarding a general Indigenous Land Law largely relegated the specific
issues related to Bosawas to the backburner. It also diverted attention from the territorial
demands of the Mayangnas to the more numerous and powerful Miskitos. The armed
occupation of most of Waspam by the ex-Yatama Miskito combatants in 1998, one of whose
demands was the demarcation of their territories, and several highly visible regional
assemblies of the Miskito Council of Elders, accentuated this trend (Murrar and Jarquin,
1998)
32
.
Delving into the intricacies of the negotiations concerning the Indian Land Law would take
us far off course from this papers central focus. Suffice it to say that in October 1998
President Aleman sent a draft law to the Assembly without consulting the main stakeholders
on the Atlantic Coast, who all considered it unacceptable. The World Bank then responded to
pressure from indigenous organizations and their allies and insisted the government sponsor
formal consultations. At the time this paper was being revised (June 2001) the Assembly had
still not passed an Indian Land Law and no indigenous territory had received title.
One could argue in retrospect that by creating the Bosawas Reserve, the Nicaraguan
government indirectly favored indigenous land rights, even though that was almost certainly
not its intention. TNCs efforts, in particular, strengthened the indigenous organizations
capacity to defend their territories and helped legitimize the territories existence within
MARENA and international funding agencies. If there had been no reserve TNC would never
have entered the picture.
This argument contains a grain of truth, but is somewhat disingenuous, given that the
reserves managers in MARENA never fully supported the TNC agenda. Over time
MARENA has gradually come to accept the practical existence of the indigenous territories,
and in 1998 the Bosawas Technical Advisory Commission approved TNCs process for
preparing indigenous management plans in the six territories (TNC 1998)
33
. Nevertheless, the
government continued to drag its feet about providing them formal title and continued to plan
its activities with only nominal input from indigenous organizations.
The main responsibility for defending the indigenous territories from outside incursion
continues to fall on the indigenous people themselves. Government titles or statements have
not offered much protection. Thus, for example, in Sikilta, the one indigenous territory in
Bosawas with a legal title dating back to the beginning of the century, despite almost a

31
Roldan, R. (July 1996) Land, Natural Resources, and Indigenous Rights on the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua,
Legal Reflections for the Definition of a Strategy for Indigenous Participation in Participation and Development
Projects. The World Bank, Technical Department, Latin America & the Caribbean.
32
Murrar, A. and Jarquin, L. (1998) Informe de actividades, proceso de titulacin de los territorios indgenas de
Bosawas, Managua. The Nature Conservancy. 18 August.
33
(1998) Project Update for the Nicaraguan Bosawas Reserve. The Nature Conservancy. Managua. January
June 1998.

decade of intense lobbying by indigenous groups and their allies, the government has yet to
resettle mestizo farmers who have encroached upon the territory. In contrast, direct
negotiations between indigenous and mestizo organizations following violent incidents in the
area north of Ayapal in 1996, led to an agreement regarding territorial rights that both sides
have largely respected (Castro et. al. 1996)
34
. In 1995, the Mayangna Indians forcibly
expelled the Nycon Resources Company after it obtained a government concession to explore
for gold near the Waspuk River. With the help of mediation by the CRAAN, Miskito and
Mayangna communities successfully negotiated agreements on their territorial boundaries in
1995, without central government participation.
The Mestizos Devolve Power to Themselves
By 1998, mestizo farmers occupied around one-quarter of the Bosawas Reserve and more
farmers poured in each week. These farmers production systems were less environmentally-
friendly than those of their indigenous neighbors (Stocks 1998). The central government and
their foreign allies, helpless to prevent the mestizos arrival, largely ignored it. This first
became clear when the bilateral agencies and international NGOs decided where to work.
Both GTZ and TNC concentrated on Bonanza, Siuna, and, to a lesser extent, Waspam. None
of these municipalities had many mestizo farmers in the reserve, although Siuna had a large
group outside the reserve that harvested timber there. The Germans stayed away from Cua-
Bocay, Waslala, and Wiwili, the main focal points for mestizo entry into the reserve. They
financed roadblocks to control illegal log shipments and invited the mayors to a few
meetings, but little more. TNC surveyed the mestizo areas and worked for a while with one of
the mestizo organizations in Ayapal around 1995. Then they left.
Initially, security considerations drove the decision to stay out of mestizo areas with active
agricultural frontiers inside the reserve. As noted earlier, the Army either could not or would
not control the Northern Front 3-80 and its offshoots that operated there. Thus, GTZ, TNC,
and MARENA personnel feared they would be killed or have their vehicles burnt if they
entered the area. Howard (1997:132)
35
reports that when she did her research in 1995 the only
two forest guards in the Bocay area had stopped working after receiving death threats from
mestizo settlers.
Early on, TNC identified an area of 762 square kilometers, roughly 10% of Bosawas, that
indigenous communities claimed but mestizo farmers occupied. Given all its other problems,
TNC decided that to focus on these areas would be too conflictive and concentrated instead
on the other indigenous territories. It hoped that if the first six territories received title it could
shift to the more conflictive areas. That has yet to happen.
In mid-1997, a large portion of the Northern Front 3-80 supposedly disarmed after lengthy
negotiations with the government (PPRB 1997) Nevertheless, MARENA, GTZ, and TNC
still did not move into the area because the local population was too hostile. Howard (1997)
notes that of the 42 mestizo farmers she interviewed in Tunawalan, a village inside the
reserve along the Bocay River, only one supported the idea of a reserve. The rest either
opposed it or did not know what it was. Besides, the agencies had nothing concrete to offer
the mestizos and no way to force them to do things against their will.

34
Castro, M. and 11 other signatories (28 May 1996) Acta No. 2, Negociacion Indigena-Mestiza. Wina.
35
Howard, S. (1997) Livelihoods, Land Rights, and Sustainable Development in Nicaraguas Bosawas Reserve.
Sustainable Agriculture in Central America (Jan de Groot; Ruerd Ruben eds). New York: St. Martins Press:
129-41.

The previously mentioned attempt by GTZ to set up roadblocks to stop the illegal timber
traffic in 1998 was one of the few times they tried to intervene in the mestizo areas. The
Mayors office, the Army, the Police, MARENA, and some local organization like the
Catholic Church were each supposed to nominate two people to work in the roadblock. The
GTZ thought that would reduce the possibilities for corruption. This had some success in
Siuna and Waslala, but in Cua-Bocay and Wiwili, local authorities quietly resisted
participating and blocked the initiative. The small-scale loggers of El Naranjo in Waslala just
redirected their shipments. Instead of sending logs by road, they began running them down
the rivers.
Since MARENA, GTZ, and TNC had such limited control over the mestizo areas themselves,
they were forced into a rearguard action of trying to convince other foreign financed
projects not to assist the colonists living in the reserve, in the hopes that would discourage
them from living there. This also met with only limited success. As part of the effort to
pacify Cua-Bocay, Waslala, and Wiwili and resettle former Nicaraguan Resistance forces
there, the OAS and the European Union financed resettlement and rural development projects
there that the Bosawas authorities were concerned would stimulate further migration into the
area. In 1995, the Minister of MARENA and the GTZ urged the European Union projects in
Cua Bocay and Waslala to stop lending money for livestock in areas near the reserve
(Comision Nacional de Bosawas 1995)
36
. Later the Bosawas Technical Advisory Council
opposed funding for an OAS project in Bosawas on the same grounds. Ironically, SETAB
also criticized European Union support for a mestizo organization called the Small Farmers
Association for the Protection of the Bosawas Reserve (ACOPROBO), arguing that its
members occupied the reserve illegally. ACOPROBO had changed its name from the
Mestizo Association in 1998 in the hopes of legitimizing mestizo presence in the reserve
and attracting outside funding.
Devolution From Below
Much of the promotional literature about devolution portrays well-meaning governments
magnanimously handing control over forest resources to previously powerless local
communities. That hardly applies to the case of Bosawas. There a weak central government
partially devolved authority to an autonomous region and indigenous communities literally at
gun point and its successors then tried hard to reverse the process. They largely failed due to
their own relative weakness in the region compared to the power of the indigenous and
mestizo populations and their local authorities and governance structures. The Government
never formally devolved much authority to the mestizos of Jinotega, but it didnt really
matter because it never had much authority in the first place. Both indigenous and mestizo
inhabitants and their leaders derive their power from direct knowledge about and possession
of the resources on the ground, the local legitimacy of their governance structures, the
balance of military power, their organizational capacity, their ability to obtain favorable press
coverage, and their alliances with international NGOs and national political parties.
Indigenous communities and the residents of the RAAN can also appeal to legal arguments
based on the 1987 Constitution and Autonomy Law.
A second interesting aspect of the Bosawas case is the overlapping nature of the governance
structures affected by formal devolution policies. In this case, we have regional governments,
municipal governments, indigenous territories, and the Bosawas Reserve itself. The

36
Comision Nacional de Bosawas (July 1995) 2da Sesion Extraordinaria. Hotel Selva Negra, Matagalpa,
SETAB / GTZ.

indigenous territories span various regions and municipalities and only portions of them are
contained within the reserve. Similarly, the reserve includes an autonomous and a non-
autonomous region, five municipalities, six indigenous territories, an area in dispute between
indigenous people and mestizos, and other areas of mestizo settlement. If one overlays on all
this the areas of influence of the different ethnic groups, the armed bands, and powerful
churches and donor projects one can sense the amazing complexity of power relations on the
ground.
Ivory tower devolution advocates commonly suppose that local groups claims over forest
resources and their local governance institutions are somehow inherently more just,
legitimate, or environmentally-friendly than the rules imposed by the central government.
The Bosawas case, however, lends only partial support to that idea. Strengthening Mayangna
land rights and institutions probably would help conserve the forest and certainly would be
more democratic than allowing other ethnic groups to completely dominate and marginalize
them. This also applies to the Miskito Indians, although not as strongly. But even in these
cases one cannot ignore the rampant corruption and undemocratic features common in many
communities, nor the underlying tensions between the two groups. The argument is even less
evident in the mestizo areas, where local control may lead to rapid ecological destruction and
social differentiation, not to mention corruption and violence. The fact that centralized
control may have equal or worse repercussions should hardly console us; appealing to or
favoring the less of two evils is a weak foundation for sustainable development,
conservation, or social justice.
Thus, we cannot conclude devolution is always a good idea. Instead, we argue that, like it or
not, in most forested areas one confronts what Migdal (1988)
37
refers to as strong societies
and weak states. That is unlikely to change and must be the starting point for future
discussion.
Some readers may shrug the Bosawas case off as a curious exception. Nicaragua is famous
for its political instability and military conflicts and one might certainly question whether it
represents a typical case. Surely, central governments must not lack territorial presence and
political hegemony in all heavily forested area and not all have free-roaming armed bands or
other strong local authorities.
As one looks across the humid tropics it quickly becomes apparent that situations where the
central government lacks authority in forested areas are far more common than generally
recognized. In many, though by no means all, of these situations, autonomous armed groups
have sprung up to fill the vacuum. The Peten in Guatemala, the Colombian and Peruvian
Amazon, South Par in Brazil, the two Congos, the Central African Republic, Sierra Leone,
Angola, Burundi, Cambodia, Burma, Aceh in Indonesia, Mindanao in the Philippines,
Nagaland in India, and much of Thailand all appear to fit into this model. Even in countries
with more apparent political stability, central governments often lack operative governance
structures in forested regions, much less effective control. In these situations devolution must
be understood not as a process through which governments hand over authority to local
groups, but rather a means to try to gain some minimal authority in contexts where they
traditionally have had none.

37
Migdal, J.S. (1988) Strong Societies and Weak States, State-Society Relations and State Capabilities in the
Third World. Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton University Press.

There are, of course, exceptions; countries with strong states in forested areas and well-
meaning devolution policies that transfer authority from central governments to local actors.
Many central government decisions regarding whether to place forest and mining
concessions, dams, roads, troops, settlement projects, and even national parks have direct
impacts on the ground. We would argue, however, that these are the exceptions; the rule is
the contrary. Because the same things that historically allowed tropical humid forests to
persist are those that have limited the political hegemony and authority of the central state. If
debates about devolution and conservation lose sight of this fact, they will be little more than
wishful thinking.

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